Chapter 4
When Danny is eighteen, he goes home with Julian for Thanksgiving.
Danny and Cal never discussed the possibility of Danny flying all the way back to Montana for three days. Everyone is already going home for Christmas two weeks later—how can anyone justify those hundreds of dollars?
It doesn’t occur to Danny that most of his classmates and their parents have in fact justified those hundreds of dollars.
It isn’t until the Monday of Thanksgiving week that he realizes he is to spend Thanksgiving alone.
The girl he’s sort of seeing who is not yet his girlfriend—going back to Minnesota.
Julian—going back to New York. On Thursday morning, Thanksgiving Day, Danny is lingering in his extra-long twin bed feeling uncomfortable when Julian returns from the showers and says, “Dude, pack your bag.”
Danny props himself on an elbow. “What?”
“I got you a ticket.”
“A ticket?”
“I posted in the dorm page to see if anyone was selling their seat on the train. Cassidy Sinclair just got norovirus. We have to leave for the station in seven minutes.”
Danny sits up all the way. “For where? New York? How much does the ticket cost?”
“I already bought it.” Julian tosses Danny’s empty duffel bag onto Danny’s bed. “Look alive, Aagaard. Pie awaits.”
So Danny ends up going with Julian to the station—one of Julian’s upperclassmen friends drives them in his car—and then follows him blindly down the platform and into the seat previously reserved for the unlucky Cassidy Sinclair.
It’s nowhere near Julian’s seat, but Julian convinced the man sitting next to Danny to swap; Julian’s seat was nicer.
As they trundle through the wildfire colors of New England fall, Julian talks about his family—about his father, who’s intense but brilliant, and his mother, who keeps the peace, and his sister, who’s the favorite.
“Ouch,” Danny says.
“Nah,” Julian says. “She’s my favorite, too.”
He tells Danny about growing up on the Upper West Side, which he assures Danny is not the Gossip Girl side, and about their strict church attendance, which surprises Danny—he’s never heard Julian mention religion.
When they get off the train at Penn Station, Danny is swallowed in a vortex of people, all of whom seem to be in a hurry to walk exactly where Danny is standing.
He’s immediately aware that his clothes—red flannel, old Converse—are not exactly wrong but also not right.
Julian’s head bobs toward the stairs, and Danny hurries after him.
“We’ll take an Uptown C,” Julian says, and Danny nods like this means something to him. On the subway, they’re packed so tightly in a crush of bodies and puffer coats that when the train jerks to a stop, there is no way to fall over. Everyone just smushes.
And then they step out onto Central Park.
The trees are such a vivid yellow it seems fake, a trick for tourists.
Julian is saying something about the parade, which has already ended, and how it always causes so much chaos, but it’s kind of fun when one of the floats flies away.
Danny is only half listening. He’s looking at the trees and the hills rolling toward water.
He didn’t know a city could be as beautiful as this—not so much because the park is more than the forests he grew up with, but because the park is here in spite of the city all around it.
Somewhere along the line, someone said, “You know what’s even better than selling an apartment complex?
A place for the trees.” And there it is.
“Sorry,” Julian says. “It’s usually a way better view. There’s always all this shit around after the parade.”
“I think it’s amazing,” Danny says.
“Really? Because people don’t usually like Central Park.”
“Seriously?” Danny asks.
“No,” Julian says. “No one has ever not liked Central Park.”
How great is that? Danny has never particularly cared about being singular.
Danny makes them stop so he can buy flowers for Julian’s mom. Julian tells him it’s not necessary, but Danny is fairly certain that it is. He buys a sparse bouquet at a bodega. Julian waits outside and reads the news on his phone.
Julian lives in a house on a street that feels vaguely European to Danny, or maybe just out of another time.
There are no gaps between the buildings, but Danny’s surprised how quiet it is—people walking dogs; families with bikes.
Julian turns abruptly up a brick staircase packed with slick leaves.
The door is vast, and in the corners and behind the lights are streaks of black.
It has an air of erstwhile glamour to it.
Danny says, intellectually, “Sick house, man.”
Julian snorts. The trees on either side droop their wet branches toward Julian as he rattles the lock, leaning his shoulder into the door.
There’s a tender sort of expertise to it—a grumpy door; someone who grew up opening it.
The door gives, and out comes the warm smells of rosemary and garlic, and the gentle playing of acoustic guitar, the glow of a house made for a family larger than two.
When Cecilia greets them—when she spots Danny—her face collapses into ill-disguised grief, then rebounds just as quickly. Danny is welcomed inside, and he catches a glimpse of a table set for four.
“Don’t worry,” Julian says as they drop their bags in his bedroom. “They’re weird and formal but ultimately glad you’re here.”
“Thanks, dude,” Danny says. “I strive to make people ultimately glad I’m here.”
Cecilia invites them to freshen up while she scrounges around for another place setting somewhere. (“She means the cabinet,” Julian says. “It’s fine.”)
On the way to the bathroom, Danny pauses outside an open door.
Inside is a bedroom, and on the armoire, there’s a tall, sage-colored vase.
It’s abstract in a slightly off-putting way, with one handle that looks like it’s melting.
The vase stands out to him because it reminds him of something his mother would have made—the color, which is lovely, and the shape, which is hideous.
She was forever creating art Danny and Cal could not grasp.
It seems to Danny of no great surprise that the Olsens’ taste would be just as impenetrable.
He has a vase like that in his childhood bedroom, and it probably taught him more about art than any class.
To have taste, he thinks, you have to have both experience and opinions.
His mom had seen a lot of vases, and she always had opinions, so it followed that her taste in vases was probably good.
Cal has seen the normal number of vases and rarely has opinions, so it’s fair to assume that his taste—and also Danny’s taste—is deficient.
Danny is so distracted by the vase that he’s not paying any attention to the voice coming from the bedroom, though that was probably what had made him look in the first place.
It’s Phillip on the phone. His voice is muffled, like it’s coming from behind a door, and then suddenly it’s sharply clear: “No, she’s fine today.
You don’t have to come over. Why would you want to? ”
And then Phillip appears in the open doorway.
Danny steps back. Phillip steps back. He ends his call abruptly. Lowers the phone.
“Sorry,” Danny says.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Danny.” Danny pauses, then sticks out his hand. Phillip looks down at it for three long seconds before he shakes.
“Are you a friend of my son’s?”
Danny doesn’t understand how Phillip doesn’t know who he is. Danny knows who Phillip is; Danny has asked questions and seen pictures. Cal certainly knows who Julian is. They’ve all talked on speakerphone.
“Roommate,” Danny says. “I’m sorry I didn’t— You didn’t know I was coming.”
“Did you have somewhere you wanted to be?” Phillip says.
“Oh. Yeah. Bathroom?”
“This isn’t the bathroom.”
“I’m sorry.”
“This is my bedroom. We don’t usually expect guests skulking around.”
“I’ll just— Back this way, then?”
When they all sit at the table, Danny finds Phillip watching him from across the table. Phillip seems to be cutting his turkey with unnecessary force.
“So Danny,” Phillip says. “You’ve always been vegetarian?”
“Yep,” Danny says. “So I guess I don’t know what I’m missing.”
“Can’t be many men who are vegetarian. Seems like more of a girl thing.”
“Oh my god,” Eve says, “Dad.”
“I mean, statistically,” Phillip says.
“In fairness,” Julian says, “it’s probably true, statistically.”
“You’re so retrograde,” Eve says. “I genuinely cannot.”
“Did you just learn the word retrograde?” Julian says.
“Did you just learn the word I’m a stupid butthead?”
“That’s a really long word,” Julian says. “Can you spell it?”
“So Danny,” Phillip says. “What are you studying? English? Art history?”
This is obviously intended as an insult but Danny can’t figure out how or why. “We haven’t actually declared yet, but I’m probably doing CS.”
To Cecilia, Phillip says, “Isaac, from church—you remember Isaac? He works for one of those fringe streaming companies. Maybe he’d get Danny here a job.”
“Funny little man,” Cecilia says.
“You can’t just call people funny little men,” Eve says.
Cecilia sighs.
“Don’t be rude,” Phillip says. It seems to be directed at Eve rather than Cecilia, but Danny is just doing his best to keep up.
Julian leans forward. “Is he the one who married that woman who— I don’t know the polite way to say this. Very beautiful and successful?”
“Out of his league?” Phillip suggests. “Yes, Maeve. She’s a partner at her firm.”
“I’m sure he’s fine,” Eve says.
“Don’t be contrarian for the hell of it,” Phillip says. “You’d hate him. He’s a clod.”
“Danny’s going to think we’re mean.”
“Why is he a clod?” Julian asks.
“Just last week,” Phillip says, “your mother and I were talking to Maeve after service. A good discussion, mind you—we were talking about hyperreality because I’d just had to walk through Times Square for a meeting.
And then Isaac comes up, completely interrupts, starts talking about an influencer he saw explaining Baudrillard. ”
“As if he couldn’t even hear the irony,” Cecilia says.
“I’m willing to concede that that’s somewhat ironic,” Eve says.
“Aha.” Phillip points his fork at her. “I told you. You’d hate him.”
There’s a long pause. Danny feels like it’s his responsibility to fill it—to respond in such a way that establishes him as an us rather than a them—and so, after a moment, he says, “Sounds like a fox pass.”
A beat.
Eve looks at her plate. Julian turns to Danny.
“What?” Julian says.
“That he interrupted,” Danny says. “To, um. Talk about an influencer.”
“No,” Julian says. “Did you just say ‘fox pass’?”
“Um.”
“Faux pas?” Julian says. “Do you mean faux pas?”
Danny laughs lightly, which makes Julian laugh, too—and Phillip and Cecilia.
Eve looks at Danny with horror, which he can only assume is horror at him, at the fact that he does not know how to pronounce French words he’s only ever read in books, at the fact that he has never had a single thought about Baudrillard.
Danny spends the rest of dinner saying little.
It reminds him of his conversational Spanish class, where he’s fluent enough to listen but not so fluent as to think of a response before the moment has passed.
After the pie is finished, the Olsen parents pour themselves more wine, and Julian pours himself a glass, too; no one says anything.
Danny slips into the kitchen, where there are utensils and baking trays piled in the sink.
He turns on the water, which is hot right away, and inhales the dish soap smell, which claims to be grapefruit bergamot.
There’s something wrong with this—that he’s more comfortable doing their dishes than sitting with them, like there’s a part of him that believes this is where he belongs in their relation.
But he can’t rouse himself to feel so ashamed as to go back to the dining room, so he begins to wash.
When Eve arrives, he tries to gently explain that he doesn’t need any help, but she lingers at his side.
She keeps looking up at him with—what is that?
But teenage girls don’t make sense to anyone.
When Julian told Danny about his sister, it was mostly in terms of illness—how she’s sick and no one can account for it—so he didn’t expect the person she is, bright and clever and full of life.
He wonders what she’s like among her peers—if she’s well-liked in her class, and if all her friends also expect Thanksgiving dinner conversation to revolve around philosophy.
It occurs to him briefly that if he and Julian stay friends for a few more years, he’ll get the chance to see where life takes her—which Danny will enjoy.
He doesn’t have any younger siblings or cousins.
When they’re on the train back to campus the next morning, the gentle sprawl of suburbia zipping by, Julian says, “I think my sister has a thing for you.”
Danny laughs. “She does not.”
“She followed you around all day!”
“She’s, like, sixteen.”
“I mean, don’t do anything about it. Gross. I’m just saying, she didn’t ask me seventeen questions about the music I’ve been listening to lately.”
Danny laughs through his nose and looks out the window.
The truth is, he can’t imagine a world where a person like Eve would be interested in a person like him—or, more precisely, where a person like Eve would remain interested in a person like him.
It all reminds him too much of his parents.
She, who is intellectual and cosmopolitan.
He, who leads a simple life of quiet joys. She, who would tire of him.
Already, Danny fears people tiring of him.
He fears it with the women he dates and he fears it with the friends he keeps.
Someday, maybe sooner, maybe later, Julian will get bored of teaching Danny how to behave, how to think, how to have taste.
This friendship doesn’t have the bones to last forever. They’re just too different.
A year goes by, and then another, and then a decade, but Danny feels this day happening again and again in a relentless present tense.
This is it, the fox pass, the mistake he can’t stop making.
If not this, then the next thing—the wrong shoes or the wrong job or being too obvious about trying too hard or not hard enough.
He will never fit in with this epitomic Manhattan family—not if he starts a company with their son, not if he falls in love with their daughter, not if he lives in New York for a thousand years.